View Articles

BHOPAL: Dalits and Tribals in Madhya Pradesh particularly, Dalits face discrimination in almost every walk of life. According to an exhaustive study done by a rights group Dalit children across rural Madhya Pradesh face some 70 kinds of grim abuses. The study which was supported by the Action Aid reveals that Dalit children in schools are forced to eat mid-day meals in marked out plates and asked to sit in the back rows of their classrooms. The Dalit schoolchildren across rural Madhya Pradesh face some 70 kinds of grim abuses, a new study backed by rights group Action Aid has revealed.

The steady decline in oil prices in the latter half of 2014 - by more than 40 per cent by December 10 to a five-year low of around 63 dollars a barrel - has become an unexpected bonanza for import-dependent countries like India but also carries with it some significant downside risks for the global economy as a whole.

The Modi government’s decision to do away with the six decade old Planning Commission is an important exercise in a federal setup meeting the assertion of the chief ministers. Modi had announced this from the ramparts of Red Fort during his first Independence Day speech. This week it has been taken forward with a meeting of chief ministers to discuss and decide about the shape of the new body. As expected, politics has crept into this important issue and the efforts to sort out the differences in the retreat informally did not work. While the NDA chief ministers endorsed Modi’s view the UPA chief ministers, mostly from the Congress ruled states opposed the idea that it was being done with a view to get rid of the Nehruvian legacy.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Is the legal tide turning against Finance Minister and Kerala Congress(M) president, K. M. Mani in the bar bribery allegation case? The question may seem A BIT far-fetched at the moment. But a few straws in the wind are too significant to be dismissed as being of no consequence.

Most of the large oil-importing consuming countries including India and Indonesia, which bear the additional social burden of ever-escalating fuel subsidies to insulate their poor people from global oil price gyrations, heaved an immense sigh of relief when the 12-member Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) did not cut output to shore up its sliding crude prices in its meeting on November 27. The Vienna-based world’s premier commodity cartel since the mid-1960s has been agonizing over the declining crude prices from a level of $114 per barrel in June to around $65 per barrel now.

Does a government’s size really matter when it comes to delivering good governance? In business, a slim management and small workforce are generally linked with higher efficiency though the desirable manager-worker ratio varies from industry to industry. Contrary to general perception, India has one of the slimmest governments in terms of the bureaucracy-public ratio. It also has one of the laziest, underperforming and ineffective bureaucracies in the world. Except the population and the number of political parties, all else are in big short supply.

CHANDIGARH: Can the rot in Punjab be stemmed? Perhaps not, at least in the foreseeable future. Take any field of public activity – politics, economy or governance. The all round decay which continues unabated makes the Akali-BJP government eligible to claim the rights of the film “Three Idiots” sarcastic title song “All IS (un) WELL”! The observation may appear too sweeping and harsh. But a close look at the happenings in the state, notwithstanding the state’s ruling bosses claims to the contrary, would show that the comments are not wide off the mark.

Among the more interesting recent developments in Indian politics is the attempt to regroup fragments of the old Janata Parivar and launch a new, reunified party which recreates the once-powerful Socialist current in politics. Long a part of the Left, this current was second in importance only to the Communists until the 1970s.

The attempt by some of the losers of the last general election such as Mulayam Singh Yadav, Lalu Prasad Yadav, Nitish Kumar and others to come together has a number of negative connotations. The most obvious of them is their blatant opportunism. None of them can claim to be close friends. Yet, they have now gathered under the same roof and are even holding hands, as H.D. Deve Gowda and Sharad Yadav did, in an unconvincing display of camaraderie.

India and Russia are natural allies despite whatever is happening across the globe. Though not being an immediate neighbour, Russia is an indispensable and time-tested friend. The erstwhile Soviet Union was sympathetic towards India's struggle for independence. After Independence right from the Nehru era till today, the friendship between India and Russia passed through several trials. In the days of cold war, when India chose to for the non-aligned movement (NAM), the friendship between the two countries did not enter a bitter phase. On the contrary, there were pressure tactics from the Western bloc on India on various issues.